#oneaday Day 849: Do people really not finish games?

I've seen it often suggested that "no-one finishes games" these days. Is that really true? I don't know. I am certainly not a representative example here, because I tend to only start games that I know I am going to finish for the most part. It might take quite a while to finish some of these games, if they're epic-length RPGs, but I will generally make an effort to finish everything I start. I have a mostly positive success rate.

I'm interested in this perception that no-one finishes games any more, because it's one of those things that is an alien concept to me — particularly with story-based games. Can you really derive any sort of satisfaction from playing a narrative-focused game and just leaving it unresolved? I guess in some ways it's the same as watching part of a TV series and then dropping it partway through. But it's still kind of alien to me.

So I thought what I'd do today is go through some games I can think of off the top of my head that one might regard as "popular", then see what the Steam Achievement rate is for "finished the game" or equivalent achievements. I appreciate this is an imperfect metric, because it doesn't take into account other platforms (particularly those which don't have achievements, like Switch) but it'll do for a rough idea. All right, let's take a look.

Pragmata

42.3% of people who played Capcom's Pragmata on Steam finished it to the point of seeing the credits roll on a first playthrough. This is a reasonably respectable number so far as I'm concerned, and I'm unsurprised to see this so relatively high to kick us off. Pragmata was praised as one of the first genuinely excellent triple-A games for quite a long time, so it's encouraging to see this many people play it through to completion.

It is less than half of the people who started it, though.

We see a big drop-off when it comes to completing optional material, though. 13.4% completed the main objective in all the Training Simulator side activities, which I completely empathise with; the Training Simulator is by far the worst part of the game and I absolutely hated every second of it. I am, therefore, unsurprised that a similar number of people went through and completed the postgame scenario, "Unknown Signal", since that involves running through a series of Training Simulator-like missions — only without the annoying bits. However, if you weren't to know about the "without the annoying bits" part, I can completely understand you not wanting to bother with it. And the additional bit you get on the ending for completing Unknown Signal is absolutely not worth it, either.

Resident Evil Requiem

Would you look at that? Nearly 75% of people have beaten Resident Evil Requiem, one of the most well-regarded entries in the series for quite some time. Only 65% of them beat it on "Standard (Modern)" difficulty, though, suggesting that all the Difficulty Level Discourse we've been having for the last few years has had an effect; there's a small but statistically significant number of people who had no qualms about playing on the lowest difficulty level.

Interestingly there is a different percentage for "complete the game on at least Casual difficulty" and "complete the game" ("Hope and Requiem"). I wonder how that happened?

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

We look at a longer game now with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Here, just under 40% of people actually finished the game. I can sort of understand it in this case, because although Expedition 33's main narrative is thoroughly compelling and emotionally engaging, the gameplay is challenging enough that I can see a significant number of people falling off before the end. It's one of those instances where although the developers made a huge, beautiful world and obviously want as many people as possible to see it, they also weren't willing to compromise on the mechanical intricacies of the game. Respect to them for that, but it does mean that significantly less than half of the players who started the game finished it.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

Pity poor Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, though, a game where only just over a quarter of people who started it played it through to completion. This is another one that is arguably understandable due to the vast size of the game, but the team behind the game have got to be looking at that figure and feeling a bit disheartened.

But at least it's not the original Final Fantasy VII, which only 8.7% people who played it on Steam have finished. It's a shorter game! But there's also the fact that a lot of the people who would be inclined to buy Final Fantasy VII on Steam have nostalgia for having played it on PlayStation back in the '90s, and as such they may have just fired it up for a session or two to indulge that nostalgia, then set it aside. Less than 10% kind of sucks, though, because I'm sure there's some people coming to it for the first time, starting it and then never seeing it through to its magnificent conclusion.

Blue Prince

Honestly I'm surprised that nearly 40% of people finished Blue Prince, because it's the kind of game that repels you hard if you're not into it. But then you might say that the sort of people inclined to pick up Blue Prince probably already know that it's a game they'll like, and thus there should be a respectable proportion of them who finish it.

I didn't stick with Blue Prince long enough to know if this trophy encompasses all the endgame bullshit you have to do other than playing the annoying house layout game, but either way, even getting as far as just finishing the annoying house layout game is worthy of respect so far as I'm concerned.

Fuckin' hate that game.

I think that'll do for now. I know that's probably far from a representative or statistically significant sample, but on the whole, it seems like, on average, less than half of the people who start a game on Steam finish it. The games that are more likely to get finishes are ones that are on the shorter side, like Resident Evil, while longer RPGs inevitably see a much more significant drop-off. More niche-interest titles likely enjoy a slightly higher completion percentage due to the people playing having a sort of "vested interest" in the game and the genre it occupies, but still.

Anyway, I'm not sure I have a point here. So long as games that you can complete continue to exist, I will continue completing them, one at a time, because that's how I enjoy playing. If you're someone who doesn't beat games, do make an effort to finish one or two. I can pretty much guarantee you'll find it to be a satisfying experience. Just be warned: once you start in earnest, you'll want to beat everything you play… and for some, that way lies madness!

At least you're not chasing platinum trophies. That really is a sure-fire way to ruin all enjoyment of video games.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 848: Initial impressions from St. Amelia

I've been playing Silent Hill Townfall! It is good. I think I am enjoying it more than Silent Hill f, but I do intend to go back and give that another go (and a shot at one or more of the other endings) for the sake of fairness, comparison and suchlike.

Silent Hill Townfall is quite a different sort of game, though. For starters, it's presented from a first-person perspective rather than Silent Hill f's third-person viewpoint, and it places a strong emphasis on stealth rather than combat. There is combat — and it's modern-day, weighty, get-hit-once-and-half-your-health-bar-is-gone combat — but for the most part, sneaking around pretty much always seems to be an option, and in some cases is outright essential. I am fine with this.

I know some people don't like stealth much, but when it's executed well, it can be a great part of a game — and it's especially fitting with the horror genre. It makes absolute thematic sense to be creeping around monsters who very much do not have your best interests at heart rather than attacking them, and it especially fits with Silent Hill's traditional idea of a relatively "normal" person being the protagonist.

Silent Hill Townfall also provides you with some excellent tools to help with the stealth part. The main one is a little portable CRT television which you can "tune in" to monsters' frequencies, and this allows you to "see" them, even through walls. At other times, you have a pager whose LCD display shows the direction that monsters are in, but not details. Most of the monsters move in clear patterns, so the stealth sequences tend to boil down to puzzles of sorts: how best to get across the area while avoiding ending up in their line of sight.

There's excellent use of sound, too. When you're visible and vulnerable to a monster, the background audio builds in a gradual crescendo before eventually giving a "boom" when they're actively pursuing you. Likewise, you can tell when you've reached safety, because the background audio chills out a bit. Very clever and subtle.

I'm not entirely sure what's going on in the narrative as yet, but that's par for the course with the series. There is a lot of… medical stuff going on, though. Medical stuff in general gives me the squick, so it's ideal horror fodder for me; when combined with some of the other stuff Silent Hill Townfall is doing, I'm very happy at the experience it has provided thus far.

Highlights for me in the seven or eight hours I've apparently played since yesterday include some puzzles that involve creatively interpreting video footage to determine a combination number subtly hidden within; an inordinately stressful sequence in which you are tasked with performing various medical procedures on a patient while a complete cunt of a doctor yells at you over an intercom for being incompetent; and a puzzle based around locating blood bags, pairing them up with the appropriate medical charts, and then combining them to crack a code that unlocks a door.

I'm not crazy about the "instant death" monster who showed up during the blood bag sequence (only during the hunting for the blood bags, not during the puzzly part, thankfully) but, as previously noted, the sneaky-sneaky nature of most of the game means that you're already well-trained at avoiding monsters by the time you run into it anyway.

I'm looking forward to seeing where the story goes. There's already been some intriguing weirdness to it all, but I have no idea where it's going to end up just yet. We shall see, I guess — that is, if Ace Combat 8 doesn't distract me from it too much…

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#oneaday Day 847: Skeletons

I've been following this Jacob Geller business with mild interest. I have no particular "horse in the race", as it were, as I don't really know who he is, haven't watched any of his videos and don't own his book(s), but it's clear that his work meant a lot to people and thus, the recent revelations about him have genuinely hurt those people.

If you haven't been following this, Jacob Geller is a video essayist who apparently does some good things about video games. As I say, I've never watched his stuff (and am probably not going to now) but, prior to all this, he seemed to have a pretty solid reputation as being a decent human being. Progressive, even. Now, of course, that trust has been broken; in a statement he put out yesterday, Geller noted that the whole situation is "the biggest regret of his life", but regardless of those regrets and what he has done since that time, to a lot of people — particularly his biggest fans — that past indiscretion is a permanent blot on the copybook.

And I'm not even saying that's wrong. Sexual assault is, of course, no laughing matter, and for it to get as far as the victim invoking "Title IX" (whatever that is, I don't know American law for obvious reasons) means that it must have been pretty serious. It's entirely understandable that, even though that offence took place many years ago at this point, some people simply cannot trust this person ever again.

What I find myself wondering is how this keeps happening. I feel like for the last few years, we've seen a steady stream of people who build up a following and a fanbase in the public eye online, only for it to come out that, at some point in their past, they were a despicable human being and may or may not, in fact, actually still be one, despite the front that they've been putting up to the world. And every time it happens I just wonder: what happened to these people? How did their life end up that way?

Perhaps it's a personality type thing: the person who is likely to find success at YouTube and streaming in 2026 is also the type of person who is likely to have sexually assaulted someone ten years ago. I don't really think that's true. I know people personally who have been doing YouTube for that long and, to my knowledge, none of them has ever done anything like that. I guess that's always the point in these kinds of situations, though; you never really know until something comes out about them.

Does that mean everyone should be looked on with mistrust? Of course not; that's no way to live. But I don't blame people for being wary at this point. It's happened too many times.

I think in my case I'm just confused because everything about all this is just a completely alien concept to me. I'm not saying this in a self-aggrandising "look at me, I'm a wonderful person" sort of way; I just mean that the very idea of treating another human being with such a lack of respect is so utterly unthinkable to me that I simply cannot imagine how people like this ended up doing what they did. But it only takes one lapse of judgement to bring a career to an end — those consequences might not be for ten years or more, as we've seen here, but it seems they are pretty likely to catch up with them eventually.

Perhaps it's for the best that I've always been riddled with social anxiety and have thus led quite a straightforward, normal and boring life. If nothing else, it means that Past Me has never been in a position to acquire any skeletons in his closet. And I'm glad about that. Not because I have any particular designs on Internet Fame or anything, despite the amount of stuff I post publicly. But because it means I can continue existing with a clear conscience.

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#oneaday Day 846: Eye for an eye

We are brought up with, it's fair to say, somewhat conflicting messages on the subject of revenge. On the whole, we are mostly discouraged from it on the grounds that it doesn't necessarily solve anything, and any momentary high you might feel from delivering it will likely be short-lived. But we're also bombarded with popular media that makes revenge look cool.

I've gone through my life trying my best to not hold grudges too much, but there are a few times I've been wronged where I just cannot, with good conscience, let it go. In each of these situations, I feel like part of me desires revenge on the person (or group) who wronged me, but I have not, to date, had the opportunity to follow up on any of these desires. And I honestly don't know if I would, given the opportunity.

But the thought is there. It's always there.

There's one thing the objects of my grudges all have in common: they were all in positions of power, and they all abused that power in some way. Whether that was for their own material gain or the end result simply being hurting someone (me), they all leveraged the power they held in a way that ended up having a negative impact on someone else's life. And not always just me, either.

For the sake of… I don't know, propriety? I will refrain from naming specific examples here. But it's been long enough now for one of them that I think I can talk in slightly more than vague terms.

I used to have a job that I absolutely loved. It was a job that involved using my skills and passion every day, and I thought it was a job that would set me for life. I liked the people that I worked with, and I did well at the work itself. All looked good for a while, but over time, the people in charge started to see fit to… start exerting their influence more than they perhaps had done in the past. And this started to come to a head with a colleague of mine who ended up dismissed from his position — which, like me, he had loved and always given his all too — on the grounds of some spurious accusations about his behaviour. I know they were spurious because I worked with this guy every day and there is no way in hell he would have done anything the slightest bit inappropriate, whatever that might mean to you. (It wasn't anything sexual or violent he was accused of, I hasten to add.)

But he had a target marked on him from thereon, and during the long and painful process of his disciplinary proceedings leading to his dismissal, he asked me to be his second in the various meetings involved along the way. I looked up what a "second" was supposed to do in this situation, and determined that they had the right to ask questions and help to defend the person who had nominated them. So I did. I assembled a set of questions that would help my colleague explain that this was all complete nonsense, and that he had been maliciously targeted… and I was basically told to shut up partway through proceedings. Naturally, as you might expect, that then caused a target to appear on my back, too — again, despite me having not actually done anything wrong. I hadn't even had a single complaint from a customer in my case.

The injustice of it all stung back then. It was excruciating to see first my colleague and friend pushed out of his position, and then to see it happen to not just me but several others of our number also. The people who had all the power in this situation were very obviously misusing it. Why? I do not know. I don't know what they would "get" out of losing several of their best employees — and there were ample metrics to back up that boast, in the form of the "NetPromoter" surveys all our clients had the option to fill out after a session with us — other than a sense that they were in control, this was their domain.

Regrettably, I encountered a very similar scenario on multiple subsequent occasions, and it was always the same. There was always one individual at the centre of it all, who had developed something of a God complex based on the little power they had over other people — or rather, the fact they held the keys to people's careers. In every instance, these people exerted their influence in a way that hurt others, poisoned the atmosphere around them and couldn't have been any benefit to them and their team whatsoever. And not one of them saw any consequences for their actions that might discourage them from doing it again. So they almost certainly have done it again since.

These are the people I want revenge on. These are the people I've never been able to forgive and forget. These are the people who, if I ever saw them again, I would… I don't know. I'm not a violent man, and I have no desire to end up with any sort of assault charge. But if any people in the world deserve a good punch in the face and/or balls (where applicable), it's these people I'm thinking of right now.

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#oneaday Day 845: It is late night

It is very late, because I thought I'd finish Nighthawks this evening. I successfully did so, then decided that I wanted to write about it while it was fresh in my head, so I did that also. Now it is 1.15am and I haven't written this, so here I am.

I really should probably make an effort to go to bed earlier. I find it enormously challenging to get up every morning. It's a weird sort of… dread of what the day holds. Not because I'm actually literally anticipating anything terrible happening, but just because being in bed feels warm and safe and nice, and I often wake up in the morning having been in the middle of a pleasant dream that I'd like to go back to.

I know I can't just go back to a dream by snoozing my alarm and closing my eyes, of course, but my body still tries. Oh, heavens, it tries. It resists with every fibre of its being. It wants to disappear into whatever other dimension we go into when we dream, and leave this world behind, if only for an hour or two. Even though it's just had a good eight hours or so of being able to do exactly that.

It's strange, really, isn't it? We sleep every night, and most of us get roughly the amount of sleep we're supposed to get. So why is it so easy, of a morning, to fall into a pattern where you just want to keep sleeping? I love sleeping. I love what my brain does while I sleep. Dreams are fascinating, though I know not everyone enjoys hearing about them. I find them interesting, though, and often want to cling onto them after I know it's time to haul myself out of bed, make some breakfast and set about the day's business.

I dunno. It's probably just one of those things where you have to get yourself into a healthy and productive routine… and perhaps determine your own circadian rhythm, too. Oddly enough, I find myself more awake if I have to get up to have a wee at, like, 6am, than I do when my alarm goes off at 8. Maybe I should just start getting up at 6, have that wee and then stay up.

But then bed is warm and nice and comfy, and deliberately depriving myself of two hours in there feels like such a waste somehow.

I don't really know what I'm talking about any more. That's probably a good signal that I should save this post, scribble some stupid doodle to go at the top of it, and then actually go to bed. I am borderline delirious, but I have no regrets. I really enjoyed the end of Nighthawks, and I really enjoyed writing about it. Please go read my thing about Nighthawks, then buy and play Nighthawks. It really is very good.

And on that note, then, good night. I am about to go and sleep very well.

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#oneaday Day 844: Mechannative

These days, I feel like a lot of people determine that they're either into narrative-centric games or mechanics-centric games, and don't do much in the way of cross-pollination, even when the games themselves do so. I'm sure we all know at least one person who takes inexplicable pride in the fact that they skip all the cutscenes in games, for example.

Me, I've always been a "why not both?" kind of person. There are times when I'm in the mood for a game to tell me a good story, times when I'm in the mood to engage with some interesting mechanics — and times when I find a blend of the two to be most rewarding.

Actually, there are times where I feel like I'm enjoying mechanics-centric games a lot more now than I have done in the past — to such a degree that I've found myself wondering more than once if I actually prefer them. This was particularly fresh in my mind while I was feasting on Super Mario Galaxy while we were on holiday.

Then a game like Nighthawks comes along, and I'm reminded of how involving and immersive a game that places its narrative front and centre can really be. How it can feel like you're really inhabiting a world with a cast of characters, truly sharing your experiences with them.

The gameplay in Nighthawks isn't especially complex, but it is enough to distinguish itself from both visual novels and adventure games. I'll have a lot more to say about this when I write about the game in full once I've beaten it. I'm not sure how far off that is now, but I've been playing for 30 hours and things are definitely building to something. But suffice it to say for now that I am thoroughly enraptured by this dark little world and the colourful cast of misfits that populate it.

I think the simple answer is that I just like a wide variety of gaming experiences, both mechanics- and narrative-centric. I attribute this to growing up in an age where mechanics-centric was the norm and narrative-centric was relatively unusual to see, and then having several of my defining gaming experiences be with narrative-centric games, including Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and Final Fantasy VII. This state of affairs helped me see the benefit of all types of games.

Well, no. There are some games, like grand strategy affairs, that I still find largely indecipherable. But I guess one has to draw a line somewhere. As it stands, I don't think I'm ever going to be short of things to play!

For all the terrible things happening in the games industry, it is still a great time to be into games. And there are a bunch of things out in the imminent future that I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck into. After Nighthawks, of course…

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#oneaday Day 843: Exploring the mundane

One of my favourite things in video games is when a game takes a very small, pretty mundane environment and renders it in a ridiculous level of detail. I'm not generally a "graphics person", but if you give me a game in which I can poke around a tiny, convincingly rendered house in extreme levels of detail I will be very happy indeed. Consequently, I am very excited to check out Silent Hill Townfall when it arrives.

I actually don't know very much about Silent Hill Townfall. I don't even really know how it plays. After not loving how Silent Hill f turned out — or more accurately, how it played — I haven't really been following the new one, but I have seen a few screenshots floating across my feed here and there. And I am finding myself oddly excited by them: specifically, by the fact that the game unfolds in a lovingly recreated depiction of working-class Britain (well, Scotland, but much of the characteristic visual identity is similar) and allows you to… well, poke around in tiny, convincingly rendered houses in extreme levels of detail.

I'm all for this. The idea of Silent Hill being more of an amorphous concept than an actual, physical place is a solid move for the series, I think; for all my grumbling at Silent Hill f's gameplay, its vibes and depiction of 1960s rural Japan was fantastic. The way the setting reflects the protagonist's mental state has always been an important part of the series, and setting it in places other than small-town America allows a lot more scope for this aspect of the storytelling.

I'm not even all that bothered about the inevitable "Otherworld" stuff that will almost certainly be part of Townfall. I don't need spooky scary monsters jumping out of closets at me. I just want a cool little world to wander around.

My attitude towards this sort of interactive experience goes some distance to explaining why, back on its original release, I enjoyed Gone Home so much. There are still people who get absolutely frothing mad about that game, but I was never one of them. For me, it perfectly captured the almost exact same feelings that I felt when I first returned to the place that had once been my home after my first wife left me. You might think that's not exactly something I'd care to be reminded of, but at the point I played Gone Home there was enough distance between that happening and me being able to look back on it and appreciate a piece of work that understood those feelings.

A similar thing for Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, a mostly forgotten PS4 game in which you walk very slowly through an English village and weird things happen with no real explanation or resolution. While I very much understand some people bouncing off that one in particular, I was thoroughly enamoured with just existing in that world.

I think all this goes back even further to Build engine games like Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior and Blood, which at least made an effort to depict convincing, realistic environments and feature interactive elements you could fiddle around with. Of course, the tech was too limited to be able to create environments with the level of detail we expect from our big-budget entertainment today, but there was something oddly… real-feeling about these virtual locales that I never quite got from games that took a more fantastic or sci-fi approach.

So yeah. I'm mostly excited about Silent Hill Townfall to wander into houses that look a bit like where my Nan used to live. And I don't have a problem with that at all. If the game turns out to be good, so much the better. But I'm going to enjoy just exploring that world, I think.

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#oneaday Day 842: Quick catch-up

I forgot to write something on here yesterday! In my defence, I wrote nearly 4,000 words on Ys VIII over on MoeGamer so I think you can probably cut me a bit of slack. I'm still going to take this post to "catch up" though.

I really enjoyed Ys VIII overall. It still feels a bit odd to play an Ys game that is 50+ hours long, but the game didn't drag at any point. It consistently sends you to new and interesting locales, and the story develops in some thoroughly intriguing directions as you progress. I successfully got the "true" ending, which isn't all that difficult to get (you just need more than 198 reputation points, which are easily acquired through just normal gameplay) and everything wrapped up in a most satisfying manner.

After writing my piece on Ys, I went back to the excellent Nighthawks, which is a spectacularly good game. As you might expect, I will be writing a more substantial piece on this once I've finished it, but suffice to say for now that if you have enjoyed any of the relatively recent crop of what I like to call "storytelling RPGs" (Disco Elysium, Esoteric Ebb), then you will definitely get a kick out of Nighthawks.

I think one of the things that always impresses me the most about a good quality game like this is how it can truly create a sense of a world without having an actual 3D space you can freely wander around. For me, the primarily text-based world of Nighthawks is considerably more compelling than a fully 3D modelled but ultimately bland and personality-free "open world", particularly because of the colourful characters that inhabit that world. It's funny, because this is exactly what the capital-A "Adventure" snobs were talking about in the early days of the medium; if you have a suitably compatible brain, the imagery conjured up by your mind from reading text will always be more vivid than anything even a powerful video card can render. (Of course, the fact that Nighthawks has beautiful art and excellent voice acting also helps a lot.)

Once I've finished Nighthawks, I'm going to play Silent Hill Townfall, which looks like it's going to be thoroughly interesting. I'm oddly excited to play a game with such accurate-looking renditions of a British (well, Scottish) town, and I'm intrigued to see how the game differentiates itself from other Silent Hill games. I didn't love Silent Hill f, although I didn't hate it either; from what I understand, Silent Hill Townfall is quite a different beast anyway, so I'm excited to explore it.

After that, I think it's going to have to be Ace Combat 8. I love Ace Combat, and this new one has been getting excellent reviews. I'm happy about that. The series deserves to do well, and it's nice to have a game like this on modern hardware. I mean, the PS2 Ace Combat games still look surprisingly great, but it's even better to have something in full HD-o-vision.

There we go, all caught up. Now watch me forget to write something later today.

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#oneaday Day 841: The politics of farting

One of the most complex parts of human interactions that we all have to independently learn to navigate is the politics and etiquette of farting. We all do it — yes, even you — but everyone, eventually, comes to their own conclusions as to how, when and why they let the bum gas fly.

I grew up in a household where farting was considered very amusing. Both my Dad and my Mum could let out an absolute ripper of a trump in their prime, and the culture of our family was that you did it without shame. The implication was that you were in a safe place and could be yourself, as disgusting as you wanted, and you would be accepted for it.

Curiously, though, I was not allowed to say the word "fart" as a child. It was considered a swear word. To this day, I'm not entirely sure why, though I guess it occupies the same tier as "crap" where, in the appropriate circumstances, you can probably consider it a mild profanity. Instead, we would typically just use the word "flatulence", which, despite being the scientific, medical term for it, is a very funny word indeed. Occasionally, if we came across a particularly amusing euphemism for it either on television or in other media (such as in The Beano, which I read habitually as a child) and would make use of that, but "flatulence" is the one that stuck, and "fart" was verboten. (I am allowed to say "fart" these days, though I'm pretty sure my parents still don't use it much.)

School is a complicated time to determine your outlook on farting, because you are faced with a variety of mixed messages. Were you to let out a honking grunt in the middle of a quiet lesson, would everyone laugh, or would everyone consider it disgusting and shameworthy? At least part of it is down to the overall way that you are seen generally; if you're one of the cool kids, farting is hilarious, while if you're an unpopular person for one reason or another, farting is the height of shame — so much so that even the accusation of having farted, even if you hadn't done so, could earn you the ridicule and censure of your peers.

Such was the case within lessons, of course. At break and lunchtime, that was a different matter. I have strangely vivid memories of an occasion during my time at primary school where my best friend Matthew and I were trying out shoulderstands (which we'd recently learned for the first time in PE) and discovered that the contortions involved in performing a shoulderstand not only churn up your guts a bit, they also slacken your ringpiece in a way that is eminently suitable for ripping a chuffnut. Thus we spent quite some time attempting to discover the optimal position in which to achieve salty guffs almost on demand.

I'm primarily talking about farting here, but burps bear mentioning, too. Burps, to my recollection, never carried the same possibility of shame as farting, and instead they had a variety of social functions. Those who learned how to burp on command became comedy gods, and those who could summon up a thunderous belch from the very depths of Hell itself could make use of them in a strangely aggressive, dominant manner. Again, I think back to my schooldays, and a particularly vivid memory is standing waiting for the bus with the other people from my village, and my sometimes-friend Dale repeatedly letting out some of the most earth-shaking burps the world has ever heard, on at least one occasion causing the headmaster of our old primary school (who lived near where we waited for the bus) to come outside and ask him to please stop doing that.

Farts are a sign of acceptance in a friendship group, though. People you can fart in front of without shame are people you can call true friends. And, unsurprisingly, I have a lot of weirdly "special" memories of times spent farting with people who are important to me. Some of the most vivid involve my friend Woody, who I would often end up sharing a room with if we were sleeping over at our mutual friend Edd's house, since we both lived a fair distance away.

On various occasions, Woody summoned up "canned veg farts" (absolutely rancid-smelling guffs that were akin to opening a bin that hadn't been emptied for a month in terms of the poisonous atmosphere they created), "water farts" (repeated, loud parps that he swore could be attributed to the amount of water he had drunk that evening) and "Emperor farts" (honking trumps that were preceded by a quote from The Emperor in one of the original three Star Wars movies). There was also the evening of "Did You Hear What I Just Felt", where a particularly vigorous anal fanfare was followed up by the briefest, quietest sound, a little like what raw chicken sounds like if you pick it up. He had to go and check himself after that one.

In somewhat later years, one of my most memorable days working at the Apple Store was the day we had a detailed discussion in Back of House about what the absolute optimal conditions for farting were, and we collectively determined that it was sitting on a hard, wooden dining chair while naked and slightly damp. If you have never farted on a non-padded dining chair, I highly encourage you to try it. You might be surprised.

Of course, it's also an important moment in a relationship when one or the other of you decides that now is the time to start farting in front of each other. It goes back to family; being able to rip out a salty grunt in front of someone without embarrassment, shame or fear is a sign of trust. And the expression of this trust is often unspoken; you never, ever have a discussion about "well, I guess it's time we started guffing around each other". It just sort of happens. And that's lovely.

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#oneaday Day 840: The deluge has started

The deluge of amazing games coming out in the latter half of this year has started. I've already noted that I've been playing the excellent Nighthawks from Wadjet Eye Games, and that is very much occupying my immediate attention, but also on my radar for the immediate-ish future are Silent Hill Townfall and Ace Combat 8, both of which seem to be going down well with reviewers so far.

I also still need to finish Ys VIII, which I set aside while I started Nighthawks, but I think I'm going to devote tomorrow to. I was enjoying it a lot, and I think I'm getting near the end, so I would like to finish it properly. Ys VIII is not a recent release, though. It came out ten years ago and has had two sequels since then, both of which I would like to play at some point.

Not only that, but I've been having a steady stream of stuff I preordered months ago finally coming around — just this week I've had Chained Echoes and Trails in the Sky Second Chapter come in, Little Goody Two-Shoes is on the way and I'm sure there are others to look forward to.

Situations like we've got here are why I'm not immediately worried for the crash that the top end of the industry appears to be careening towards. I have enough unplayed (or "want to replay") games on my shelves to last me for many, many years at this point, so if there comes a day where, for one reason or another, I just can't buy any new games? I think I'm probably going to be fine.

It will be a sad day when it's no longer possible to buy boxed copies of games, of course — and I'm sure once Sony successfully pushes for this with their abandonment of discs in 2027, at the very least Microsoft will follow — but I'm well-stocked in my little bunker for such an eventuality. Only question is: will I actually be able to finish all these RPGs before I die? I reckon I can… assuming the world itself lasts that long, of course.

My wife often takes the piss out of me for the number of games I have that are still shrinkwrapped, but I've always bought stuff with this sort of eventuality in mind. I mean, I was hoping it would never actually come to a day where physical media would no longer be a thing — and I guess it still might not, as much can change even in the space of a year — but I've basically been investing in the future enjoyment of my hobby, and in the meantime, I've been wanting to just support the games that I would like to see more of. As frustrating as it is to know that "Day One" sales count for almost more than anything for a lot of developers and publishers, it is, unfortunately, a fact. And while I'm in a position where I'm comfortable enough to be able to support the stuff I like, I'm happy to do so — even if I don't get around to actually playing the games in question until, at times, a year or two (or ten) later.

Anyway, I'm not buying anything else until payday next week. But I will probably be picking up Silent Hill Townfall and Ace Combat 8. I do genuinely want to beat Ys VIII though! Really! I want to write about it and everything!

For this evening, though, Nighthawks is calling, so if you need me, I'll be stalking in the shadows of Cradlebridge.

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